{"id":1812,"date":"2013-09-05T11:42:50","date_gmt":"2013-09-05T18:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1812"},"modified":"2013-09-05T11:42:50","modified_gmt":"2013-09-05T18:42:50","slug":"my-profile-of-peter-hessler-essayist-of-place-in-china-colorado-and-cairo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1812","title":{"rendered":"My profile of Peter Hessler, essayist of place in China, Colorado, and Cairo"},"content":{"rendered":"

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From Los Angeles, California, which has become both my home and main subject, I connected with Peter Hessler in Cairo, Egypt, which has become both his home and main subject. He moved there with his wife, journalist Leslie T. Chang, and twin daughters after a stint living in and writing about southwestern Colorado, which itself succeeded his years based in and observing China. Though by now a relatively distant era in his career, Hessler\u2019s China period, and the books River Town<\/em>, Oracle Bones<\/em>, and Country Driving<\/em> which sprang from it, made his name. Roughly half my Middle Kingdom-savvy friends, casually polled, credit him with firing up or bringing a new clarity to their own interest in the region, and the announcement of his 2011 MacArthur Fellowship cited his keen observation of \u201csuch rapidly changing societies as Reform Era China.\u201d But with little desire to become a writer of place associated with only one place, let alone an old China hand, he has, in the past decade, cast his eye outward. For a bridge between his observations of the East and the West, we readers can cross his new essay collection, Strange Stones<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Almost all written under the aegis of the The New Yorker<\/em>, the book\u2019s pieces find Hessler bushwhacking along the Great Wall, patronizing the dueling rat restaurants of Luogang, keeping up with a hard-drinking Tokyo crime reporter, seeking out Yao Ming\u2019s Houston barber, and assessing the legacy of uranium mining and role of the independent pharmacist in Colorado\u2019s small towns. This gave us an array of colorful subjects to discuss, but then, Hessler also had a revolution to cover; we spoke in mid-July, not long after the forcible unseating of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated President Mohammed Morsi, Egypt\u2019s first democratically elected head of state. Had things quieted down enough over there for us to settle into a conversation? \u201cLast night there were like seven people killed, street fighting,\u201d Hessler told me. \u201cIt\u2019s still going on.\u201d In the heat of the Cairo protests, Open City<\/em> author and observer of Lagos Teju Cole had this to tweet: “\u2019Hope this one will be a good coup\u2019 is a pretty accurate summary of my childhood in Nigeria. Over and over again. It never was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hessler\u2019s take? \u201cIt\u2019s a common pattern. It takes a long time to break cycles. There\u2019s always a lot of hope, and people make the same mistakes again and again. This recent incident I\u2019m not sure how to evaluate yet, but the government run by the Muslim Brotherhood was incompetent \u2014 unusually so. I just didn\u2019t see a future for them: they showed so many signs of being incredibly insular and incapable of dealing with anybody else, a weak group that had alienated all the security forces, the police, the army. You could see it on the street. It wasn\u2019t a big shock. Whether or not it\u2019s an improvement I\u2019m not sure, but the way they were managing the country and their relationships with other powers… you\u2019re not going to last. It\u2019s a lesson in realpolitik.\u201d Critics of the Chinese government, under which Hessler lived for over a decade, may ascribe to it a variety of failings, but rarely do they call it incompetent. \u201cSome things, they handle poorly,\u201d Hessler said. \u201cBecause they\u2019re not in a competitive political environment, they don\u2019t understand how to present a good face, especially overseas, but it\u2019s a minor issue compared to stuff we\u2019ve seen here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLiving in Egypt makes me \u2014 I don\u2019t know if appreciate<\/em> is the right word, but \u2014 respect the strength of the Chinese government. For years, people there have talked about all this unrest, all these protests, and my perspective was always that that was exaggerated, in terms of whether the Party was in trouble. Being here makes me realize how relatively stable China is; the Community Revolution actually changed Chinese society. I\u2019ve been spending time in Upper Egypt, in a village, and none of these cycles \u2014 the Mubarak regime or the Morsi regime or whatever\u2019s going to come now \u2014 has changed the structures there. It\u2019s still based on clans, on families. Things just continue the same way they always have. People talk casually about the \u2018Jasmine Revolution\u2019 in China, about overthrowing the Communist Party, but it\u2019s a deeply entrenched organization and political system, functional in a way that\u2019s not even in the same conversation as what goes on in Egypt.\u201d The Egyptian village situation brings to mind the scene in Monty Python in the Holy Grail<\/em> where Arthur, King of the Britons, encounters a group of his peasants who, having heard neither of Arthur nor Britain, insist to him that they constitute an \u201canarcho-syndicalist commune.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hessler didn\u2019t observe the quite the same disconnect in China, which underwent \u201cthis incredible material and physical change. The landscape and everything totally shifted. Here you don\u2019t have that. The economy has been decimated, so you don\u2019t have people improving their lives in a material sense, but you do have this incredible political change, leaders coming and going, rising and falling.\u201d How much of turbulence could he have foreseen before moving to Egypt in late 2011? \u201cThe revolution began while we were making our plans. I could see it was pretty intense from the events in January that year. The very first month I was here, they had major protests near Tahrir Square, and I wrote my first piece for [The New Yorker<\/em>] about them. It\u2019s been a series of these episodes. It\u2019s moving quickly.\u201d But he spoke to me from a relatively safe place: his home in Zamalek, a Cairo neighborhood on the north end of Gezira Island in the Nile. \u201cThere are a fair number of foreigners here and a lot of embassies, so it has good security,\u201d so he described it. \u201cIf big things happen, if there\u2019s unrest, Zamalek remains quiet. It has bridges that can be shut down by security forces, which happens periodically. It\u2019s also just a pleasant place, greener than most of Cairo, a mile and a half from Tahrir Square, a mile from downtown. One nice thing about Cairo you don\u2019t have in China: old buildings. We\u2019re in an Art Deco building with high ceilings and a lot of neat touches. I really like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet he and his family\u2019s relocation didn\u2019t happen without a struggle. \u201cWe showed up with just what we could carry on the plane. Of course, we also had twin babies, about a year and a half old at that point. we really didn\u2019t have the support system here. It was a tough initial period.\u201d And then, of course, they had the language to grapple with. \u201cWe decided to start with [an Arabic] program in the states; we didn\u2019t want to show up totally cold. My wife and I enrolled in the Middlebury College Language School course, an intensive summer program: eight weeks of immersion. They\u2019d never had anybody do it with kids before. It was brutal, just incredibly hard. It turned out to be an efficient way to get started, though quite painful. Now I can get the good basics from anybody, talk about politics, get a sense of their opinions. I still get lost after a certain point, so I can only do a simple interview, but it\u2019s improving all the time. The hardest part is done.\u201d He did admit that he and Chang immediately broke Middlebury\u2019s \u201clanguage pledge\u201d not to use English \u2014 \u201cwe had to take care of these babies; it\u2019s not like we were going to fumble through Arabic with each other\u201d \u2014 which highlights the contrast between his Egyptian linguistic situation and that which he first enjoyed in China.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was thrown in there in the Peace Corps, 27 years old, in a small, remote place, pre-internet,\u201d he said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t really have functioning phones. Of course no cellphones. No distractions, a lot of time, and I was able to learn Chinese quite quickly.\u201d Some of writers of place have little interest in local languages, and even dismiss studying them as a distraction from rigorously observing their surroundings in English. Hessler stands firm in the opposite camp: \u201cIt\u2019s essential. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t live in a place for an extended time without studying the language, trying to gain some facility with it. It\u2019s a mistake not to do it. Even if you can\u2019t learn the language fluently, just do the best you can. You have to make it a priority. I haven\u2019t done a lot of writing my first year and a half here, because I\u2019ve been trying to do language.\u201d For him, mastering a foreign language means not just gaining a tool to learn more about a culture, but gaining sight of a reflection of the culture itself. \u201cThere was a period of Alaskans-have-40-words-for-snow and all that kind of stuff, which linguists then felt was exaggerated. But you do feel the different priorities of a culture through the language. Here, it\u2019s simple things like insha\u2019Allah: any time you talk about the future, you have this phrase, \u201cif God wills it,\u2019 just an automatic thing you do. You use it here all the time; it\u2019s not something you do to fit in. Now, in English or Chinese, I want a phrase for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hessler\u2019s preferred language practice happens out in the streets. \u201cI prefer to wander around and talk to people. My work schedule has been so demanding, I\u2019m not out wandering as much as I\u2019d like. This incident in the last two weeks, you just spend all your time trying to figure out what\u2019s going on. It\u2019s not the relaxed lifestyle I had in Fuling.\u201d In that Chinese hamlet, his life in which provided the subject of River Town<\/em>, Hessler could build routines that simultaneously helped him improve his Chinese and give him an excuse to engage closely and regularly with Chinese people: \u201cOn Tuesdays I\u2019d go to the park at the top of the hill, and on the way down I\u2019d stop at this guy who had a little photo shop and chat with him. Then I\u2019d go to a noodle restaurant I liked. I\u2019d have these days with three or four stops. I didn\u2019t have to repeat the same conversations, could deepen friendships over time, and would learn new things as well.\u201d Such a social practice, he finds, \u201cmakes you more outgoing. In China or here, I\u2019m more interested in talking to people than in my home culture. I\u2019m trying to learn, trying to practice, learning what\u2019s going on. You can\u2019t do it with a translator. You have to have natural, normal, one-on-one conversations to get a sense of how people think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hessler has drawn acclaim as an observer who can capture politically sensitive places while writing primarily about people and rarely about politics, but Egypt\u2019s current troubles dare him not to approach them head-on. \u201cI\u2019ve had to do a lot of straight politics here,\u201d he said. \u201cI finished a long piece right before this latest round of events looking at the politics, but it\u2019s actually more to do with archaeology in rural Egypt. You can write about it both ways, and that\u2019s my goal.\u201d He operates on the premise, in fact, that you best understand the political through the human. \u201cPolitics is not a black box. If you talked to all these people, you could see what was going on in the last six months. You could feel people unhappy with this government. I wouldn\u2019t have predicted a coup by any means, but I did send a note to my editor five days before: \u2018There\u2019s going to be a lot of protests. It could turn into something big. We need to be ready.\u2019\u201d And you shouldn\u2019t, to his mind, do this talking only in major cities, even though, \u201cif you\u2019re going to write about and understand Egypt, you have to spend time in Cairo. It matters more than Beijing or Washington D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n

But when he and Chang moved to Egypt, \u201cit was the country we wanted to move to. I\u2019m not a huge city person. I\u2019ve always written about places outside the main cities, and even when I lived in Beijing, most of my stories were not from Beijing. After my first year here, I started to go to Upper Egypt to get a feel for a different part of the country.\u201d It echoes his experience in China where, \u201cafter more than a year freelancing in Beijing, I realized I needed something more intimate, a smaller place I could feel part of. I would rent a car and drive around the regions of the Great Wall. I like to be in a place with a long history \u2014 China, of course, had that. It gives you more directions as a writer, more to investigate. The story\u2019s bigger, richer. I met people working on a dig in Upper Egypt in a place called Abydos, and on the first visit I saw a story I could do. I started making trips back. In a city, there\u2019s so much else going on, it\u2019s hard to pick out those echoes of the past. In a smaller place, it\u2019s clearer; in Abydos, there are two big structures in town: a temple from 1500 B.C., and a massive mud brick fort which dates to almost 3000 B.C. It\u2019s tangible. You feel connected to that ancient past, and notice the same behavior patterns you recognize when you read about that past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Egypt also provides him with a very different feeling of personal foreignness than did China. \u201cIt\u2019s much less intense here,\u201d he said. \u201cIn China I was more conscious of my identity as a foreigner. I stood out more. Egypt is a pretty mixed place: people who look blonde, who look black, who look like me. My wife is Chinese-American, and people don\u2019t stare at her. It\u2019s not like China, where they\u2019re yelling at you, following you, totally freaking out. It makes me realize that China having been closed for so many decades traumatized the place and its relationship with the outside world. In China, when I went to protests, I always felt on edge. People were often antagonistic toward me, even if the protest had nothing to do with America. Here, the protests are incredibly violent \u2014 I\u2019ve been to so many where people die in large numbers, which does not happen in China \u2014 but I don\u2019t feel things directed at me, even in protests that are anti-American. Egypt is in the middle of the world, a crossroads: people have always come in and out. They\u2019ve had a lot of contact with foreigners. They\u2019re just more comfortable with it. China has natural boundaries: go north and you\u2019ve got the Gobi Desert; west, you\u2019ve got the Himalayas; east, you\u2019ve got the ocean; south, the jungles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like America,\u201d he continued, \u201calso a place that isn\u2019t very comfortable with the outside world.\u201d This he learned during his Colorado period, which came after China and before Egypt. But he found on the other side of this discomfort with the foreign an endearing quality: \u201cAmericans are storytellers. I guess \u2018self-centered\u2019 and \u2018egotistical\u2019 is one way you could say it, but there\u2019s also something neat about people intensely connected to their own stories, trying to figure out their place in the world. In China, it could be a frustration. Chinese people don\u2019t like to put themselves in the center; it has something to do with a strong tradition of group culture, family culture, which is great, but which can make it hard for people to articulate their feelings, where they see themselves, what they really want. I had to observe people over years before I would learn key details. Going back to America, you sit down with somebody at a bar, and they\u2019re telling you within five minutes: he just got out of prison, his wife did this or that, just incredibly personal, detailed things. I do like that storytelling tradition; I grew up in Missouri reading Mark Twain. That is a deep part of what America is and what, as a writer, I connect to.\u201d<\/p>\n

As one British character said to another about Americans in Evelyn Waugh\u2019s California-set The Loved One<\/em>, \u201cThey are a very decent generous lot of people out here and they don’t expect you to listen. They talk entirely for their own pleasure. Nothing they say is designed to be heard.\u201d Hessler finds a great deal of truth in that. \u201cIt was also amazing how little people wanted to hear from me,\u201d he added. \u201cWe told people we lived in China for eleven years, and they said, \u2018Oh, were you in the military?\u2019 That was always the first question. They had this vision of, I don\u2019t know, a big Marine base in the Forbidden City. They didn\u2019t have a lot of curiosity about it; it was kind of beyond the pale. But from my point of view, that was great: after being in China so long, publishing books and articles, one of the reasons I left was that I felt myself become \u2018the expert.\u2019 If you move to New York or San Francisco, some city with a big China community, you get called on to meet other people who\u2019ve spent time there, to give talks on China. It just keeps going, and we wanted a break.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not that Hessler\u2019s time in the Middle East, however long he and his family remain there, will constitute much of a break from his craft. He first dedicated himself to writing, albeit writing fiction, in high school, and found his way to the essay form while taking a class under elder New Yorker contributor John McPhee. \u201cThe main thing is the research,\u201d Hessler said. \u201cThat\u2019s what I would miss if I were doing fiction. Nonfiction forces me to get out, to talk to people, to be attentive, to read, to try to understand history, to take notes to organize things. That keeps me grounded. Fiction would\u2019ve been too isolating a routine.\u201d In Egypt, he\u2019s found one particularly friendly escape from writerly isolation in conversations with his garbageman, Said. \u201cI spend a lot of time with him. He\u2019s interesting and funny. I\u2019ll probably write a piece about him. He seems instinctively to understand what you\u2019re doing as a language-learner. Sometimes a very educated person who speaks other languages is an absolute terrible person to speak with in Arabic, because they don\u2019t adjust. For some reason, this guy who can\u2019t even read gets it. Both my wife and I talk to him a lot. He comes by and has dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Said counts as one of the many outsiders to whom Hessler naturally gravitates. \u201c[Strange Stones<\/em> has] an essay about my former student Emily, a migrant in China living in the south, one of these tens of millions who have moved to factory towns. There\u2019s another essay about a six-foot-seven American who spends all his time obsessively researching the Great Wall in a totally idiosyncratic way. I\u2019m fascinated by people who are out of place but have created a world of their own. Outsiders are observant; they can tell you a lot about a place.\u201d As a writer and traveler, Hessler has built up not just a robust body of international work, but a robust group of international friends \u2014 friends with whom he stays in contact long after he tells their stories in print. \u201cIt\u2019s part of the job, part of my responsibility as a writer. I\u2019m not comfortable with becoming intensely involved in somebody\u2019s life for a few months, writing the story, and never having contact again. Emily was sometimes concerned I was too much the foreigner analyzing the interesting Chinese person. You never have the right to do this. You\u2019re a good writer, good at talking, good at analyzing \u2014 it still doesn\u2019t give you the right to take their life and put it on the page. When they talk to you, it\u2019s an act of generosity.\u201d<\/p>\n

[You can also read a version of this piece at Bookforum<\/a>.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  From Los Angeles, California, which has become both my home and main subject, I connected with Peter Hessler in Cairo, Egypt, which has become both his home and main subject. He moved there with his wife, journalist Leslie T. Chang, and twin daughters after a stint living in and writing about southwestern Colorado, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,50,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-egypt","category-writers-of-place"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1812"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1819,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812\/revisions\/1819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}